music

You'd think because "The Internet" equals "music piracy," your favorite pop stars would never make any money from those millions and millions of clicks on their YouTube videos. But YouTube is fast becoming a place — certainly more so than MTV (which rarely paid artists a cent ) — where fans can…

In a word, advertising. Twitter hopes that Music will get people to stay longer on the platform and to get users to reveal more about themselves for better targeting. Twitter has been working hard over the past couple of years to increase the time-spend metric by fashioning itself as a media hub. Clark Fredricksen, VP at eMarketer, says that now Twitter “wants to be a place where people find new things. The launch of Music is a logical extension of that.” Giving users a reason to visit Twitter more and stay on longer provides more advertising opportunities.

It’s a long time since Shazam was just that useful app to identify (or “tag”) music playing in the real world. In 2013, the company has a burgeoning business based around people tagging TV shows and adverts too.

Shazam recently announced a major milestone: 300m users. That’s all the people who’ve ever tagged something using the company’s app. An impressive figure, but not one that reveals what Shazam’s current active userbase is.

Over the last four quarters iTunes revenue is basically flat going from $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion. Meanwhile, iOS devices have gone from 365 million to 529 million, a significant jump. Pulling further back, as we did in this chart, over the last 11 quarters, iOS devices are up 5.3X, while iTunes is only up 2X.

Why is iTunes sputtering relative to iOS? We assume part of it is Apple’s international iOS growth where iTunes items like songs and movies aren’t available. We also assume services like Netflix and Spotify are cutting into iTunes sales.

What this means for Apple is unclear. But a big part of Apple’s strength is its ecosystem. Part of that ecosystem is music, movies, and apps bought through iTunes. If people are buying fewer movies and less music, they will be less locked in to Apple’s platform.

They have 1 billion users, but that’s not Facebook’s only amazing statistic. There are a lot more, starting with a staggering 1.13 trillion likes. One point thirteen trillion likes, people. It’s crazy. Here are the rest of their stats, compiled since the first day of Facebook:

Over 1.13 trillion likes

since launch in February 2009. Wow.

140.3 billion friend connections

to one billion total users. Is everyone connected to everyone or what, Kevin Bacon?

219 billion photos.

These are photos actually in the system, not including the deleted ones. They believe they have had 265 billion photos in their servers since fall 2005. Flickr is weeping.

17 billion location-tagged posts,

including check-ins as of September 10, 2012—since August 2010.

210,000 years of music played so far.

62.6 million songs that have been played 22 billion times. The most staggering fact about this: their music-listening app only started in September 2011 and this data is from September 11, 2012.

More useless but neat facts:

• Facebook says that the median age of the user is about 22 years.

• The top five countries, in alphabetical order, where people connected from since the 1 billion user record was achieved: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States.

We’ve heard rumblings that Facebook was testing a system called Highlight that would allow people to pay to promote a post, and now obnoxiously enough, it’s starting to show up.

Chris Cantalini, who runs a music blog called Gorilla vs. Bear, tweeted that he was posting a track by Holy Balm when he was presented with the above prompt. It asked him if he wanted to pay as much as $100 so that just one post, one song, could reach an estimated 39,000 people. For the record, only 37,000 people already Like Gorilla vs. Bear on Facebook.

This is just one instance, and the feature is supposedly not just for brands, but individuals as well, so it means we might be seeing Highlight in more places soon. Now that Facebook’s IPO has tanked, perhaps it’s looking for some fresh cash. [@GorillavsBear]

Sony Music Unlimited, the all-you-can-hear music subscription service that represents Sony’s answer to Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody and so on, added a crucial new feature to its Android app on Thursday: the ability to store music on an Android smartphone or tablet so that music fans can play it back without using a WiFi or wireless data connection.

We say “crucial” for a number of reasons – among them that cellphone providers are capping the amount of data you can stream each month (here’s how AT&T’s “unlimited” plans stack up, for example). Offline playback is also key for planes, subways, highways, and other places people like to listen to music but have a hard time streaming it. It also saves your battery, because the music only has to travel from your phone’s or tablet’s local memory to your earphones, instead of through your phone’s power-hungry WiFi or cellular radio.

In essence, it lets you take full advantage of the economics of a streaming service without sacrificing the convenience of downloads.

Evolver.fm asked Sony Entertainment Network vice president and general manager of global digital video and music services Michael Aragon why Sony Music Unlimited added the feature; he responded:

Our initial focus for the Music Unlimited service was to use our advantages of having great ‘living room’ products such as the PlayStation 3 and Bravia Internet Connected TVs to create a great in-home music experience. We accomplished that – evident by our one-million-plus active user base. However, we always knew that music mobility is a key part of our consumers’ lives and that having music available when they are not connected – on planes, on road trips – is an important part of the experience. So, in response to our customers’ wishes for offline playback, we wanted to make sure we came out with this feature as quickly as possible.

Sony Music Unlimited streams music to the home devices he mentions, as well as the Sony Music Unlimited app for Android and Android tablets, all from the same account, free for up to 30 days. The update that adds this offline playback feature rolls out today.

LimeWire has been kaput as a file-sharing service since October but that hasn’t stopped its legal woes. Now, after settling with the RIAA to the tune of $105 million, the MPAA and a host of indie music labels have filed lawsuits against the company as well. Talk about beating a dead horse.

Six studios—Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, Comedy Partners, Disney, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Brothers—have filed suit, citing the court’s summary judgement in the RIAA case as basis for their claims. In that case, the court concluded that LimeWire “intentionally encouraged direct infringement.” Now, the court will have to decide LimeWire’s culpability in the illicit trade of movies and TV shows as well.

In addition, a group of independent record labels are arguing that, because of the same summary judgement, that they too are owed $105 million. There’s no word yet on how much the MPAA is asking for in damages, but if its anything near what it enjoy threatening the common user with, LimeWire’s going to need to find some deeper pockets. [Hollywood Reporter via Techdirt]

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.